Anthropocenic landscapes
The results of man-made systems have moved the pendulum towards a new era of man's dominance over earth's ecological, geological, and geographical balance. The history of the industrial agricultural system in particular has left remnants of control on the American landscape, to the detriment of natural resources and our own symbiosis with the environment. The technology that has allowed the system to flourish now prevents us from its future. Ensuring the sustainability of food security must address the current problems of the system itself. Considering architecture's role as an extension of man's control frames this problem as one that can be alleviated through design, providing solutions for our extreme and fatalistic future. As we move into an age of resource scarcity and pre-apocalyptic advancements in technology, Central Valley, California operates as a landscape affected by this overexploitation of capitalism. Monocultures of almond orchards have led to aquifer depletion, colony collapse disorder, a crop extinction. Anthropocenic Landscapes aims to stave off catastrophe through the co-establishment of resource management, agribusiness, research stations, and agro-tourism through a series of ancillary productive towers in the landscape; a new infrastructure is formed to allow the industrial agricultural complex to sustain itself past the point at which resources become almost non-existent.